Future definition of "garcia" in Webster's dictionary: Untouchable

Another must-read article from Rudy Romero:

The way things are going, all one has to be is a Garcia in order to be beyond the reach of the law or of presidential retribution. Indeed, the time is surely coming when the Philippine edition of some international dictionary will list Garcia — appropriately with a small “g” — as a synonym of untouchable.

Any reasonably well-informed Filipino knows what I am talking about.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been confronted with the cases of two gentlemen, both surnamed Garcia. One is Winston F., the president of the Government Service Insurance System. The other is Carlos C., an active major general who until early this year was head of the comptrollership service (OJ6) of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

His propagandists have been trumpeting the message that the incumbent president of the GSIS is the best chief executive officer that the civil servants' Social Security System ever had, and last week Mr. Garcia took out full-page ads in all the dailies detailing his achievements in the various areas of GSIS operations. The big message? Winston Garcia is doing an enormously good job and his detractors don't know what they're talking about.

The other Garcia, on the other hand, is in the hottest of waters (1) because his son and his wife Clarita have been caught by the US Customs' service trying to bring large sums of American currency into the Land of the Free without making the required declarations and (2) because Mrs. Garcia stated to the US Customs' fellows that the funds she was trying to bring into the US emanated from commissions her husband received on AFP procurements and from monetary gifts made by grateful AFP suppliers.

The Tribune ran the story — the only Philippine newspaper to do so — and the resulting furor brought out the fact that the Commander-in-Chief GMA and the AFP chief of staff, Gen. Narciso Abaya, came to be informed of the Garcias' activities as far back as February 2004.

In either case, Malacañang has done nothing resembling displeasure, severe or otherwise. Malacañang's mouthpiece Ignacio Bunye has said GMA's attitude toward Winston Garcia is one of letting the GSIS president deal with his problems with the GSIS staff, GSIS members and the media. As for Gen. Garcia, GMA has done or said nothing about the entire affair.

Why this inaction on the part of the little lady from Lubao-Iligan-Binalonan? The explanations are not hard to come by. Let's take Gen. Garcia first.

Commander-in-Chief GMA has not thrown the book at Maj. Gen. Garcia, as she very well should have, because she is deeply dependent on, and owes her political life to, the military establishment. It is virtually certain that AFP's rot goes very high, and GMA does not want to run the risk of rocking the military boat on which she depends. The military brass easily put her in Malacañang and they can just as easily remove her from there.

As for Winston Garcia, GMA dare not do anything that will cause the politically powerful Garcias of Cebu to get angry at her. The Garcia family — one of whose members, Gwendoline, was elected governor in the May elections — knows exactly how GMA got to garner 1.1 million votes in that Central Visayas province and win 90 percent of the provincial vote. With Fernando Poe Jr.'s Presidential Electoral Tribunal protest about to be acted on, GMA does not want to start messing around with her principal Cebu benefactor.

I am going to end this piece on a mildly vulgar, but hopefully humorous, note. Parodying the famous advertising slogan for Winston cigarettes, the members of a gay club in London changed the slogan, during the famous Mr. Churchill's time, to read, “Winston tastes good, like a Prime Minister should.” GMA has probably changed the slogan further, this time to read, “Winston tastes good, like a Cebu politician's son should.”